The Art of Selling Yourself: The Simple Step-by-Step Process for Success in Business and in Life

Both of these well-known figures came from humble beginnings. But they believed in themselves, and they were passionate about what they were doing. And, they knew how to sell that belief and passion to others really well.

Now, most of us don't own media empires or huge corporate conglomerates, but we do want to live a life of purpose, passion, and success. And knowing how to sell yourself is a big part of making this happen. How? Because your skills, knowledge, and expertise will only get you so far. In the end, people always end up buying you.

"The Art of Selling Yourself" teaches you how to put your best self forward. Here, you learn how to believe in yourself, how to get out of your comfort zone so you can pursue your dreams, how to create meaningful connections with others, and how to recover quickly from challenging setbacks.

No matter what you do or what stage you're at in your career, you can learn something useful from this book. It's also very hands on. In many places it's set up just like a workbook, with exercises to help you learn how to sell yourself better.

Adam Riccoboni is a business development professional, and the founder of several successful companies. Daniel Callaghan was elected president of the Entrepreneurs Society, and named one of the UK's Future 500 leaders by The Guardian. Together, Riccoboni and Callaghan founded the freelance consultancy network MBA and Company, which has been featured in several major media outlets and won several awards.

So, keep listening to find out why acting confident will actually help you become confident, whether you should use deductive or inductive reasoning when building an argument, and why creating a setback pipeline will help you make the most of opportunities.

"The Art of Selling Yourself" is divided into 10 chapters. These cover everything from self-confidence and empathy, to personal preparation and managing the media. The main book ends at just under 180 pages, so it's a fairly quick read.

So let's look at chapter one, which covers self-belief and confidence. The authors make an important point right in the first paragraph here. If you want someone else to believe in you, you have to first believe in yourself. This is why having self confidence is essential to selling yourself.

Confidence isn't something you're either born with or not. It can be developed and nurtured, and there are plenty of tips and exercises early on to help you do that.

You first have to figure out where you want to go in your career. You might already know this, but if you don't, the authors include a few exercises to help you pin down what you want most in life. You also have to identify your strengths and values. When you've written all this down, you put it together to create your unique selling proposition, or USP.

Once you've gotten that bit of work out of the way, the authors talk about displaying confidence, and how to do it well. If you're not careful, confidence can easily be misinterpreted as arrogance or conceit.

We should point out that at the beginning, you might feel like your confidence is just an act, when the truth is that you don't really feel that confident at all. This is normal, and it's actually an important part of developing confidence for some people. This mindset is called retrospective rationality.

According to the work of Dr Rob Yeung, a psychologist and coach, this is how it works: your brain likes to believe that you're behaving consistently with your beliefs. So when you start acting like a confident person, your brain tries to rationalize this behavior by forcing your mind to believe that you're actually confident.

This is why acting confident even when you don't feel that confident inside can actually help you become truly confident over time. Essentially, you're faking it until your brain believes it.

Chapter two looks at preparation – and it has a particular focus on sales. You learn how to analyze your market, rehearse your pitch, build rapport with new clients, and structure a sales call.

Although there's some useful information here, we thought it was a strange addition to the book, especially so early on. Yes, preparation is important for anything. But people who don't work in sales might feel left out here.

We felt the chapter would have been more useful if it covered how anyone can prepare to sell themselves before a specific event, whether it's a job interview or the first meeting with a new team.

Chapter three focuses on your personal presentation. How you present yourself in the world plays a big role in how you're perceived by others. Although your own presentation is important, it's just as important not to judge others based solely on the clothes they wear.

The authors tell a personal story to drive this lesson home. They were in a business meeting at a bar in London, and a scruffy guy with a ponytail came in. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and was almost refused service at the bar because of his appearance. The other professionals there for the meeting gave him plenty of disparaging looks. But the authors noticed the pack of cigarettes he was holding had his own picture on it. He was the celebrated entrepreneur they were all supposed to be meeting with.

We thought this was a funny story that illustrates an important point. Dress for success, but take care not to judge others.

Chapter four looks at communication. And there's a quote in here that illustrates the importance of listening. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, "We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak."

If you want to communicate better, start by listening more.

While this is an important point, we felt this chapter was far too light on content. For instance, the authors talk about why active listening is important. But, they don't tell you here how to get better at this important skill.

They do provide some tips a few pages later, advising you to show that the message is getting through by nodding and encouraging the other person to keep speaking. Once they're done, confirm you heard the key points by repeating them back.

Now, both of these strategies are part of active listening. But there was no clear tie-in with active listening here, which we thought was a major oversight.

There's some useful information in chapter four about how to structure a discussion. For instance, if you're talking with someone who's really pressed for time you need to communicate your most important points right away. If the person has more time available, then you should spend time building up to the key message with plenty of background information.

The authors next go into how to better structure a discussion using deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is when you use facts to create a logical train of thought. By contrast, inductive reasoning is more observation-based.

So deductive reasoning is useful when you need to make a simple, fact-based argument. You should begin with one key thought, which is your primary statement. All the following statements, called secondary statements, should support this key point.

Each secondary statement is going to have a fact to support it. These sub-points are called tertiary thoughts.

Here's a simplistic example the authors use in the book. Your primary thought is that the environment is in trouble and recycling is an effective way to save it.

A secondary thought would be that recycling saves land. And a tertiary thought supporting this would be that one million acres of land a year could be saved through reducing the amount of landfills used.

We think it's helpful to see this structure like a hierarchy. When you're structuring a fact-based discussion, try to remember that your supporting statements should always be reinforcing the foundation that helps prove your primary statement.

You should use inductive reasoning when you don't have solid facts to build a case on. You start out by communicating your primary thought, just like you would do with deductive reasoning. But the statements you make after this primary thought are less structured. So you might remark about the current situation, and then follow up with an observation. Inductive reasoning is opinion-based, and flows like a river.

We felt chapter eight was useful because it covers how to overcome setbacks.

No matter who you are or what you do, you're going to experience setbacks. But how you approach potential setbacks – and react to them – can change the course of your life.

One way to do this is to develop a setback pipeline. Whenever you're planning for the future, you need to create three different scenarios for each significant event or activity: an optimistic, a moderate, and a pessimistic projected outcome. This enables you to prepare for the worst, and plan for the best at the same time.

Another important way to overcome setbacks is to learn from your mistakes. Failure happens to everyone, but within each and every failure there are important lessons. Many people want to shove their failures under the rug as soon as possible, but if you have the courage to look closely at what went wrong, you can learn valuable lessons that will make you stronger and smarter. Looking closely at your failures also means you're probably not going to repeat them.

So, what's our last word on "The Art of Selling Yourself"?

We think this is a useful book if you need a quick overview on putting your best foot forward. The information is good, and the authors keep things short and to the point.

One criticism we have is that there isn't anything new or groundbreaking in the book. The tips and strategies the authors present here are good, but you'll likely have heard many of them before.

A bigger point of contention for us was the brevity of the book. On one hand, this is a good thing because you get a nice, quick overview of how to increase your confidence and sell yourself to others. But there are many important sections we think should have been more detailed.

For example, the section on body language in chapter one is only one paragraph long. The authors spend that paragraph explaining how important positive body language is. They tell you what not to do, like slouch your shoulders or cross your arms. But nowhere do they tell you the positive body language you're supposed to try to use. There also isn't a word of caution about using body language that feels unnatural or contrived just to make an impression.

There's another good example of this scanty approach in that first chapter, in a section on staying calm under pressure. We feel this is a really important aspect to selling yourself. Yet this section too was only a paragraph long. In that one paragraph the authors talk about the importance of staying calm. But, there's not a word of advice on how to actually do it.

These weren't the only sections that were too short. Many important topics are glossed over, and you'll likely find yourself needing and wanting more information throughout the book.

That being said, this is a good book for people looking for a refresher on why selling yourself is important, or who need a brief overview of what you need to do to sell yourself effectively. There are a lot of practical exercises and case studies in the book that are useful.

What we liked best about this book is the format. The authors do a good job keeping the information accessible and easy to read. There are lots of bullet points and subheadings, so if you're looking for a specific tip or strategy you're going to find it fast. They also make the table of contents really easy to use. Every subheading is listed under each chapter, so you can reference information quickly.

So the book is best used as an introduction to many important techniques for creating a successful life and career. Just don't expect to gain a deep understanding of how to sell yourself.

"The Art of Selling Yourself," by Adam Riccoboni and Daniel Callaghan, is published by Jeremy P. Tarcher.